Errors in Content Can Impact Your Click-Through Rates

May 15, 2014 |
By
Scorpion

When you have a limited number of characters or words with which to capture
your potential client's attention, you don't want to ruin your
opportunity of doing business with him or her because of a distracting,
confusing, or embarrassing error. Your conversion rate may depend on the
accuracy of your content, even if it's "just" a 140-character
tweet or ad. Just as first impressions are critical when you're conducting
a business deal in person, the first impression of your site's content
can significantly impact your click-through rate and brand management.

Content Gaffes & PR Disasters

Content gaffes such as spelling or factual errors can lead to the wrong
kind of exposure for your business or organization and can jeopardize
your credibility with potential customers or clients. An infamous mistake
made by a PR company, for example, inappropriately and inaccurately assumed
that "Aurora" was trending on Twitter in 2012 in relation to
its client's product. The tweet's reference to the keyword, which
actually was trending because of the horrific mass shooting at a movie
theater in Aurora, Colorado, resulted in a major backlash for the company.
Some simple, quick research before posting such an item can help companies
avoid similar
PR disasters. Unfortunately, many companies are so quick to post content that they
overlook errors that can have short- and long-term ramifications.

Similarly, misspellings can have grave consequences in terms of undermining
the purpose of your content or insulting a customer base. Reports circulated
by intelligence agencies regarding Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the accused Boston
Marathon bomber, for example, failed to catch some investigators'
attention because of
different spellings of the alleged terrorist's last name. If you are targeting a certain market or demographic, it is also essential
that you make sure that your content is written and edited so as not to
offend your potential clientele. Word choice in marketing for legal websites,
for example, is crucial to maintaining ethical boundaries and not insulting
or assigning guilt to people who have been wrongfully accused.

Making sure your spelling is correct — and that it reflects current
social, cultural, and geographic trends — may also be critical to
converting a site visitor into a customer. Ukrainian leaders have tried
for years, for example, to educate others that their country should be
referred to as
"Ukraine," not "the Ukraine," explaining that the difference can be offensive to some. More recently,
people in and from Colombia have launched a campaign to stop people from
misspelling their country's name as "Columbia." "From
Facebook to Twitter to Instagram, as soon as the spelling mistake is found
in social media — and it is found a lot — no time is wasted
in shaming big companies, celebrities, and sports stars into fixing their
error, using the hashtag #itscolombianotcolumbia," writes Dan Molinski of
The Wall Street Journal.

Unfortunately, once you make mistakes in your content that turn away customers
or are pointed out by readers in social media, the aftermath can be seen
in search results associated with your brand. Make avoiding such errors
a high priority in your content initiatives and branding strategies so
that the quality of your content reflects the quality of your business.
Your company's reputability and potentially your
website's ranking can correlate with good spelling and grammar, something even Google's Matt Cutts has alluded to in the past.

Sloppy Content Reflects Badly on Your Business

Mistakes in your content can make you look like you don't care about
the details in the service you provide or the quality of the product that
you're trying to sell. Poorly written content can be just as detrimental
to your site as spammy links, duplicate content, and factual errors that
Google algorithm updates are designed to consider when ranking sites.
Moreover, if you don't take your content seriously, why should a potential
customer take your business or product seriously?

Using "spell check" in Word may not be enough to save you from
typos and factual errors. The outdated Microsoft tool doesn't catch
every type of mistake, but a reader may spot your error or be confused
by what you're trying to say and subsequently choose one of your competitors
based on its content and website.

Investing in a human editor can help you improve the spelling, grammar,
and word choice on your site as well as the structure of your content
to appeal to your audience. It's not enough to understand the topic
you're covering; you must understand the function of the content and
its purpose for the reader, whether it's an article, press release,
meta data, or social media post.

In addition to reducing the effectiveness of your content and keyword optimization,
errors also can make you vulnerable to companies that use misspellings
against others. Some companies may try to do this as a way to dupe your
potential customers into choosing their site instead of yours. Other companies
are using misspellings as a way to capitalize on opportunities to improve
marketing campaigns. Think Insights, for example, is
using search engine users' misspellings as a way to build on an advertising campaign for Snickers candy. "We worked with Google AdWords to bid on misspellings
of the most commonly searched terms," it says on its website. "Each
time someone misspelled a word, they were given a tailored message to,
'Grab yourself a Snikkers' as 'Yu cant spel properlie wen
hungrie.'"

Content Consistency as Part of Your Brand Management Strategy

When posting content or creating a content campaign, make sure that your
content is being reviewed to avoid errors that will reflect poorly on
your business. Moreover, make sure that you are asking what you can do
as a company to avoid losing customers because of poor content and to
avoid allowing others to take advantage of your mistakes.

You also need to pick a content style and stick with it. Your content should
be written to suit your target audience. You may need to opt for wording
that is colloquial or technical to appeal to your readers and supply your
information in an appropriate context. To keep your company's content
production consistent, you need to select a style guide. Whether you're
using AP style,
Chicago Manual of Style, or an internal style guide that you customized for your field, consistency
helps you avoid errors and keep all members of your content department
on the same page.

Just as you need to pick a content style for improved consistency to eliminate
mistakes in content, you need your content to accurately reflect your
branding choices. Are you starting your company or changing your company
name? Make your branding decisions now and be consistent. Even something
as simple as a character space in your company name, such as "BestCompanyEver"
versus "Best Company Ever Inc.," can affect your brand management
online and potential search results of terms associated with your brand.

Do not underestimate the consequences of errors in your content. Spelling
mistakes, poor grammar, and factual errors can undermine the work and
investment you have put into your online marketing campaigns. With the
amount of capital and effort you spend on your online advertising and
website development, "dotting the i's and crossing the t's,"
so to speak, when it comes to your content has never been more important.